moonslav59

We all saw what our pitchers just did to the Yanks. Not talking about it first is not ignoring it. Devers just homered. Why "ignore" that. (LOL- I couldn;t resist.)

Damn! That was a very satisfying win!

I assumed Bello was done for the day, when I posted this. I'm not disagreeing with Cora, though.

We'd have to get a third team involved (Philly?) or find another top shelfer on a team that can afford Devers forevers. Devers (+some cash) & Monegro to PHI Painter to PIT Campbell, Fitts, Mullins & Abreu to PIT Skenes & Bednar to BOS

20 pitches per inning for Bello, but he got the job done. We've seem to have identified our 2nd and 3rd SP'ers, like it or not. Able to improve upon or not. 1. Crochet 2. Dobbins 3. Bello 4. Buehler (by default) 5. Gio/Houck/Crawford/Sandoval (I doubt Fitts gets another look, the way he's doing at Woo.) Criswell & Uberstine look like the only other possibilities in the system, unless you think Early or Sandlin make a double leap.

Yes. I'd trade anybody for a top shelf SP'er with 3+ years of control.

Maybe Campbell to the OF? 1B Devers, 2B Story, SS Mayer, 3B Bregman in 2026. Yoshida/Refsnyder DH LF Anthony/Refsnyder CF Campbell/Rafaela RF Abreu/Rafaela (Rafaela as back-up SS and 2B) Duran traded for a pitcher.

You crack me up. Scoreboard dude! Not just today, either. Career: .858 overall .874 vs Yankees (30 Hrs in 499 PAs & 77 RBIs in 115 games, not counting today.)

I'm not so sure Abreu is the odd man out. He is easily a better defender than Duran and with the great need for plus defense in Fenway's RF, it's not something to minimize. +1 Abreu. Duran has 3 more years of arbs. Abreu has one more pre-arb season then 3 arb years. +1 year has real value. +1 Abreu Duran turns 29 soon. Abreu turns 26 soon. Depending on what you view "prime years" are, it looks like Abreu might have 2-4 more prime years than Duran. (maybe add another +1 to Abreu) Both Duran and Abreu struggle vs LHPs, but Abreu does by a significant amount. +1 to Duran. Duran's baserunning adds a big plus. Maybe +1.5. Abreu hits RHPs better, and we face them about 65-70% of the time. +1 Abreu When you bring Rafaela into the conversation, he has more years of control and is our best defensive OF'er in a difficult CF at Fenway. His bat is highly questionable, but he does hit LHPs slightly better than Duran and significantly better than Abreu. His bat vs RHPs is way worse. Anthony would bring the most back in trade, but we will not be trading him, IMO. I'd put the trade order as such: 1. Duran 2. Abreu slightly ahead of Rafaela. (I'm okay w Duran in CF, Anthony in LF and Abreu-Ref in RF with Jh Garcia to be our OF depth, after Ref retires.)

He just does not look good, at all. Too bad Jo Garcia is so far away.

Agreed. He almost retired, after last year. He may not do as well vs lefties, if he played FT or even more than he does now vs righties, but I do think he'd play more on some other teams. At least, they'd try it more. I'm fine with leaving well enough alone, and besides, we have 3 LHB OF'ers (Abreu, Duran & Anthony) plus another RHB GG candidate (Rafaela) playing FT CF.

He reminds me of the early ERod.

He's just 3 games removed from a 4 game stretch of a .979 OPS, including 2 HRs. Also, a 41 game stretch of 1.062 w 11 Hrs and 42 RBIs. Now, giving him a day off against one of these 3 lefties might make a little sense, but these are the Yankees, and Devers has been a Yankee killer.

This latest plot change to the Story is a welcome sight to see.

We have to go through this, again?

Story is getting plenty of meaningful hits, too. I like this chapter of the story.

This seems to happen more often than we think, and to all of us. Sometimes patience is rewarded: sometimes it is not. Maybe Story slumps, again, and you could end up being proven right. His defense has improved, greatly too.

They aren't supplements. They are based on the diet- all of it- not just the meat or potatoes. They include the whole diet- not just one part or trying to look at several parts all at once on our own: they are not supplements to it.

To me, defense by a catcher far outweighs what they can do on offense. I've always been one to believe a catcher's defense goes far beyond just catching the ball, throwing out base runners, blocking bad pitches and framing balls into strike calls. How they handle the pitching staff is underrated, IMO. Whether it's building a comfort zone, providing a steady target to throw to or calling the right pitch, at the right time (although some teams call almost all pitches from the bench, these days) or settling down a shaken pitcher, a catcher's job extends beyond data and stats, more than any other position. It's not something you can easily prove, but ask almost every MLB pitcher who ever existed, if the catcher makes a significant difference, and I'll bet over 90 to 95% say yes. That has to count for something. The CERA stat has been misunderstood and misused for years, as is OPS Against by catcher. It's a highly limited stat that only has use when comparing catchers catching the same pitchers over the same season, and even then, it's not perfect and often involves unbalanced sample sizes and small to tiny sample sizes. It's more about the theory that some catchers get more out of the same pitchers than others do or would be expected to do, had they been that team's catcher, instead. I'll go to my grave thinking some catchers make a huge difference beyond blocking, framing and CS rates.

We've all tried to figure out how valuable defense, baserunning, getting on base and power are when determining who are the best or better players. We all have or biases and favorite players and stats or areas of skill. It's been a years long endeavor and debate. WAR tries to quantify this endeavor by placing value on these aspects of the game. It uses historical data to determine how much a hit, homer, double, SB, error or great play leads to a run, run saved, and ultimately a team win or loss. It's far from perfect, but so are our debates and personal opinions on who is better: the .310 batter who plays GG defense at SS or the .275 batter who smacks 50 Hrs, has a higher OBP than the SS, but is just a so-so defender in LF. I think I'd trust a system based on data and historical values that determine their formula, than any one person's opinion, including my own. If you choose to ignore WAR and metrics, that's fine with me, but IMO, nobody can prove a claim that their non data based methodology is a better one. Take any top 10 list of players by WAR and compare to any other top 10 list by any stat, even OPS or wRC+ and tell me that single stat does a better ranking than WAR.

This guy is amazing. He's done this for over 3 seasons, now. He's for real! 1.005 in '22 (.792 v R) .828 in '23 (.466 v R) .941 in '24 (.733 v R) 1.010 in '25 (.804 v R) He has only been bad vs RHPs once in over 3 years. He'd probably play FT somewhere else. He's a top 10 batter vs LHPs since 2022 (.924 places him 10th among all batters with 400+ PAs.) Since 2022, he's hit .689 vs RHPs. That's not good, but these days, that's not far from being okay. .689 places 273rd out of 444 batters w 350+ PAs vs RHPs, which is near the 60th percentile. That's not horrible.

ERA over last 9 games (listed by most IP) 3.77 Crochet 2.45 Dobbins 8.00 Buehler 8.22 Giolito 4.26 Bello 1.80 Wilson 5.40 Guerrero 3.86 Weissert 1.93 Criswell 0.00 Whitlock & CHapman 2.70 Kelly 18.00 Bernardino 0.2 IP has Stock at 27.00

We've won 6 of the last 7 and 7 of 9. Over the last 9 games... Whodathunk these names? 1.167 Mayer 1.072 Toro 1.043 Romy .977 Narvaez .935 Story .873 Refsnyder .836 Campbell .744 Duran .731 Devers .688 Rafaela 18 PAs Anthony at .292, 9 PAs DHam at .556 & Abreu at .508

No Anthony or Mayer vs yet another lefty. 1. R Refsnyder RF 2. L Devers DH 3. R Romy 1B 4. R Story SS 5. S Toro 3B 6. L Duran LF 7. R Rafaela CF 8. R Wong C 9. R Campbell 2B

It's not a guess. When we used to stand around the watercooler trying to debate over who is a better players based on stats, defense and our bias, that was "real scientific," wasn't it?